Happy New Year 2009
by CooperTrooperSG1
Summary: This is the sequel to "Merry Christmas 2008." BB UST, plus Parker is there again, because he's so much fun.
1. Chapter 1

Title: Happy New Year 2009

Author: CooperTrooperSG1

Rating: K+

Summary: Follows "Christmas Eve 2008" but all you have to know is that Brennan spent Christmas with Booth and Parker and they kissed under some mistletoe again. This story takes place a few day's later, on New Year's Eve.

Author's Note: I'm glad people liked my other story. I'll split this in chapters this time... I was being lazy last time and just didn't want to bother splitting it up, but I do understand what people meant about how it would be easier to read that way. Thank you for reading, and I hope you like this story.

Ch 1

Seeley Booth hadn't even had time to get out of his 4Runner before his son flew out of the front door and was running towards the vehicle as fast as his little legs would carry him.

Rebecca came chasing after him, carrying Parker's backpack, as Booth got out of the car hastily to greet them.

"Daaaaaaaaaaaaaaaad!" Parker called eagerly, jumping at him for a big hug.

Booth swung him up into the air – which wasn't nearly as easy as it used to be – and smiled at him. "Hey, buddy, are you ready to go?"

"Yeah! Do I get to stay up until midnight tonight?" he asked hopefully.

"Well, it _is _New Year's Eve… so I guess I'll just have to let you try, won't I?"

Parker cheered and squirmed to be put down so he could scramble into the backseat. He was clearly eager to get going.

"Don't worry," Booth said to Rebecca. "I'll tire him out so much I doubt he'll make it past nine or ten."

"I'm not worried, Seeley. He hasn't stopped talking about Christmas since you dropped him off… oh, and that reminds me, _please _thank whoever gave him that horrible ant farm for me," she added a bit sarcastically.

Booth chuckled. "Yeah, that's one of the squints at the Jeffersonian – the bug guy. So, um, I'll bring him back tomorrow, before lunch?"

"I'd rather pick him up, if it's okay with you. You'll be at your place?"

"Of course, where else would we be?" he asked, confused.

Rebecca gave him a funny look but didn't elaborate. "Okay, well, I'll pick him up at about eleven." She opened the back door and smiled at Parker. "Bye, angel, have fun! Be good!"

"I will," he promised as she set his backpack down in the backseat and shut the door.

Booth said goodbye to Rebecca and went around to the driver's side. He got in and turned to Parker, smiling. "Hey, buddy. Are you excited about New Year's Eve?"

"Yeah!" Parker said eagerly. "Let's go, let's go!"

"Okay, calm down," Booth said mildly as he buckled his seat belt.

They hadn't even reached the first stop sign when Parker asked, "Where's Tempe?"

"She's working tonight, I think," Booth said, then wondered if this was going to be a problem.

"Working??? On _New Year's??? _And you don't have to work? What's she doing?"

"I don't know, buddy. She does a lot of stuff at the Jeffersonian that has nothing to do with what she does with me at the FBI," Booth explained.

"Yeah, but… how come she doesn't want to come over tonight?"

"I don't know, Parker. But you saw Bones for a long time at Christmas – she doesn't usually stay away from work for that long. You're not trying to tell me you don't think you and I can have fun without her, are you?"

"No," Parker admitted. "I still want to have fun with you, Daddy. I just wanted to see her too, that's all."

"Oh. Well, maybe you can call her in a little while," Booth offered.

Parker seemed okay with that solution, because he started telling Booth about the rest of his Christmas Day – how boring and long the lunch had been, how hard he had tried to behave all day, how annoyed the adults had been when he spilled his milk on the Christmas tablecloth… Booth was only half-listening; listening enough to commiserate with Parker, but his mind was wandering.

The truth was, Booth hadn't exactly invited his partner over for New Year's. They had tried very hard to act normally after their mistletoe kiss this year, and had succeeded… he thought. Every time he'd seen her since then, he thought they had both acted normally. But the problem was, they were both kind of _acting _normal, not just _being _normal.

True, it was getting easier and easier the more time that passed, and he was confident that in another couple of weeks, everything would really be completely back to normal.

Somehow, he doubted that being together on New Year's Eve at midnight, when you were _supposed _to kiss whoever you were next to, would help things. If anything, it would undermine everything he thought they'd accomplished with their newly-installed, once-a-year-at-Christmas rules.

Particularly because he had spent Christmas night and part of the next day reading her newest book cover to cover and, in addition to the addition of a Parker-like character, there had been a couple of scenes between Andy and Cathy that had forced him to put down the book, drink a liter of water, think about baseball and rotting dead bodies, and chant under his breath that Andy and Cathy were _not _himself and Bones.

Still, he couldn't help but agree with his son on one thing; he would have liked to see her too, that's all.

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Temperance Brennan was on the platform at the Jeffersonian, examining remains from one of the drawers in limbo, when her phone rang. She set down the femur in her hand reluctantly to pick up her phone and scowled at the display. Angela. Not that she had anything against Angela, but she was getting a bit tired of the every-thirty-minutes-on-the-dot phone calls.

"Ange, I'm still at work. Work which I would be able to do much faster if you would stop calling me every thirty minutes," she said into the phone.

"Sweetie, come on. It's New Year's. You shouldn't be alone. Come to my party. You can kiss Hodgins when the ball drops."

"_You _kiss Hodgins when the ball drops," Brennan replied churlishly, then instantly regretted it. Whatever her best friend said, even Brennan could see that Angela wasn't really over Hodgins, and neither was he. "Sorry, Angela."

"It's okay. Look, what's Booth doing? Maybe you can bring him along."

"He has Parker tonight."

"Awwww, well bring the little guy too!"

"Angela, I really don't think that any party you throw is going to be appropriate for a seven year old child. Besides, I'm sure Booth doesn't want Parker out that late. You know, driving on public roads on New Year's between midnight and three is statistically the most dangerous…"

"All right, all right, they're not coming," Angela interrupted. "Fine. But I'm sure they wouldn't mind if you joined their private celebration."

"I'm not going to interrupt what little time they get together, Angela. Look, this holiday is even more ridiculous than most; all it does is signify the beginning of a new calendar year, which in itself is a completely arbitrary system of marking the passing of time…"

"Bren, please. Some of us are hosting a party for this ridiculous holiday and need to be in the proper spirit when the doorbell starts ringing."

"All I'm saying is that it isn't important to me, Angela. There's no distinction to me between staying late working tonight and any other night of the year. I hope you have fun at your party."

"Okay," Angela sighed, sounding defeated. "But if you change your mind, you know where I'll be."

"Thank you."

"Bye, sweetie."

"Bye."

Brennan pocketed her phone and got back to work, hoping that was the end of the phone calls from Angela. Her party would be starting soon, so she probably wouldn't have any other chances to call her.

However, despite her best efforts, Brennan couldn't focus all of her attention on the remains on her table. The truth was, she had been glad that Booth hadn't asked her to come over for New Year's. She had been concerned that since she was there when Booth had worked the arrangement out with Rebecca that Parker would want her to come over again. It was much harder to say no to Parker than it was to Booth, and she wasn't sure if she would have been able to do it.

But luckily Booth had relayed no invitations from Parker for New Year's like he had done for Christmas.

It made things much simpler. She didn't need to weigh all the pros and cons of seeing Booth on a day when tradition dictated kissing so soon after they had agreed to kiss annually at Christmas.

The decision was already made, and it made things much easier.

He would come in on the second or third with a new case for them, and everything would be normal.

No problem.

She frowned at the femur that was stubbornly refusing to be interesting enough to more than thirty percent of her brain and set it down.

Maybe a cup of coffee would help.

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TBC


	2. Chapter 2

A/N: LOL, some people were glad I split the story up and some were disappointed the whole thing isn't up in one big piece. Oh well. I'll post everything I have so far and try to finish it soon. I definitely want to finish it before I have to go back to school, which is January 7th.

Ch 2

"Dad, can we do my caster board now?" Parker asked eagerly shortly after they'd gotten to Booth's apartment. They had played with some of Parker's Christmas things, but Parker wanted to go outside before it got dark.

"Just for a little while, then we'll have dinner," Booth said.

"Awesome!"

Parker ran to his room to get his helmet and pads, while Booth went to put on a few more layers. It was about twenty degrees outside, and they were predicting more snow before dawn. By the time Booth was ready, Parker was fully dressed for outdoors, had his helmet on over his knit hat, had knee pads on, and was trying to strap his elbow pads on by himself.

Booth helped him finish putting the elbow pads and wrist guards on and helped him to his feet. "Dad, I can barely move with all this stuff on," Parker complained.

"I know, pal, but I'm not taking you back to your mom with broken bones. Not even scrapes if I can help it. Now, if you don't like the pads, I can wrap you from head to toe in bubble wrap. Would that look cooler?" Booth asked jokingly.

"Okay," Parker grumbled. "I'll wear the pads." He still wanted to try out his new toy, even if his range of motion was somewhat hampered by the layers of clothing and protective equipment. He grabbed his board and followed Booth outside.

Parker had seen other kids – older kids – using their caster boards before, and it looked easy enough. He got on it eagerly and leaned forward at the waist. It wobbled, he lost his balance as it started rolling slowly, and fell on his butt on the cold ground.

"Whoa, you okay, bub?" Booth asked, lifting him up by the armpits and setting him back on his feet.

"I'm fine, Dad! I just gotta learn, that's all," Parker said determinedly.

After five frustrating minutes, Booth said, "Let me try it. It's supposed to be kind of like snowboarding; maybe I can explain it to you in a better way."

"You don't have a helmet or anything on," Parker pointed out.

"Parker, I think I'll be okay," Booth dismissed. Hey, he'd been blown up twice, shot more than once… he wasn't about to get hurt on a child's toy. He got on the board, kicked off with one foot to go faster downhill on the sidewalk towards the street.

The thing picked up speed quickly; Booth hadn't been expecting that… and the two parts of it shifted and wobbled independently, that was kind of tricky…

Just as Booth realized this probably hadn't been his best idea, he went careening off the curb into the street and was sent crashing to the ground. He tried to brace himself for a fall and hit the frozen ground hard. His mind had time to register pain before everything went black.

"Daddy??" Parker cried, running towards him. He stopped next to him, sinking to his knees, and looked at his dad in horror. "Daddy, wake up! You're not supposed to put your hand down when you fall, Daddy, Tempe says…" Parker was beginning to freak out about his dad not responding, but when he said 'Tempe,' he remembered what to do.

He felt in his dad's coat for his cell phone, pulled it out, and bit his lip nervously. He didn't know how to find a phone number on his dad's phone, but he had called his dad from his mom's phone enough to have the general idea. He tried dialing 1 and send, because he was pretty sure she would be the first person on his dad's phone.

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Brennan was labeling the remains on the table when her phone rang again. She glanced at it and sighed. It was Booth this time. She picked it up and answered it, saying, "Booth, if Angela told you to call me, forget it. There's no need to…"

"Tempe?" Parker asked, his voice sounding very small and scared.

"Parker? Are you okay, what's wrong?" she stood up quickly as she asked, sure from the tone in his voice that something was wrong.

"Daddy got hurt. He fell off my caster board and he's not waking up, and he put his hand down, like you said not to do, and I heard a cracking noise, and he won't wake up."

Alarmed, Brennan headed to her office for her keys, coat, and bag. "Parker, did he hit his head on the ground?" she asked, because that was the only reason she could think for how he could have been knocked out.

"I don't know it was really fast… I think so, maybe, yeah…"

"Okay. I'm going to come over there, but I need to call an ambulance also, so I need to hang up…"

"Nooo, don't hang up," Parker begged, sounding terrified.

Brennan heard a muffled groan through the phone, and some shuffling sounds, and was trying not to scream at Parker to tell her what was happening when Booth came on the phone. "Bones?"

"Booth! Are you okay?"

"I've been better. Been worse. But been better."

He sounded a little confused.

"Did Parker call you?" he asked.

"Yes, he was terrified. Booth, I'm going to call an ambulance…"

"No you're not," Booth insisted. "An ambulance on New Year's, Bones? For this? They're needed elsewhere."

"Fine, then, I'm coming over to look at your arm."

"How do you know my arm is…"

"Parker heard a crack. Put him on the phone, please."

"Bones…"

"Booth," she countered firmly. He grumbled something unintelligible before Parker came back on the phone.

"H-hi."

"Hi, Parker. Listen, I'm on my way to come help you, all right? But I need you to watch your dad until I get there. Go inside if he can walk okay, and then have him be still, and keep talking to him. If he throws up or passes out again, call me immediately, okay?"

Proud to be given an important job, Parker said bravely, "Okay. But hurry, Tempe."

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Brennan didn't even bother knocking on her partner's door. She highly doubted Parker would have remembered to lock it after going back inside following Booth's injury, so she just tried the handle and let herself in.

"Booth? Parker?" she called, tossing her stuff on the table by the door. Parker came running towards her and hugged her round the middle tightly; she could tell he was still very scared and worrying about his dad. "Hey, Parker. It's going to be okay, your dad's been hurt much worse than this, many times."

Parker led her into the living room, where Booth was lying sideways on the couch, still wearing his coat. His eyes were closed, but his jaw was clenched tightly so she knew he was awake. "Booth?"

"Bones, please tell him I'm fine."

"Let me make sure I won't be lying to him first. You hurt your right arm?" she asked.

"Yeah, how'd you… never mind."

"The way you're holding it," she answered anyway. She sat down on the edge of the couch and unzipped his coat. "Did you look at it yet?" she asked.

He shook his head and gestured with his eyes towards Parker, indicating that he hadn't wanted to scare him further by showing him his arm until help had arrived.

"Come on," she said, guiding him up into a sitting position and taking his coat off as carefully as possible without touching or jostling his arm.

She knew he was in a lot of pain when he didn't make any jokes about her undressing him.

She slid his sleeves up his arm a bit and nodded as she saw the unnatural bulge in his wrist she was expecting. She felt the bones carefully and said quietly, "Definitely a distal radius fracture. There's a lot of swelling and it's beginning to bruise. You may have more extensive damage but there's no point in me probing for it here when the doctor will need to do it there too."

She grabbed his chin gently and leaned over so that her face was only a few inches away from his. "What are you doing?" he asked, sounding way more alarmed than he would have if they hadn't kissed each other a few days ago.

"I'm checking to see if you have any obvious signs of neurological trauma that mean we shouldn't move you anymore without a neck brace," she answered, peering into his eyes closely.

He didn't object any more, and, feeling somewhat sheepish, tracked her finger with his eyes and did everything else she asked obediently.

"I don't think you have a concussion but they should make sure. Let's go."

"To the Jeffersonian, right?" he asked.

"No… to the hospital, Booth. There's nobody _at _the Jeffersonian right now."

"Yeah but you know how to use all the machines and you can set my arm…"

"I can, but I'm not qualified to do a neurological examination. Come on, I'll get you an ice pack and we'll go. Parker?"

He had been watching nervously from a few feet away. When she said his name, he came over to her side immediately. "Put your coat back on, please. And put your dad's badge and wallet in my purse. We'll need his ID and insurance information to get things done more quickly."

"And bring your DS or something to do at the hospital," Booth added.

Parker nodded and hurried off to obey. She went into the kitchen and got an ice pack from the freezer – Booth was well-stocked with first aid supplies, having been injured on the job many times. She put a tea towel between the ice pack and his arm and positioned it carefully, helping him to his feet and into his coat again as best she could, getting his uninjured arm in its sleeve but zipping his coat up with his arm held closely to his body.

"Don't move it," she said firmly. "You can take the ice off in ten minutes."

"Okay," he grumbled.

She knew he was in pain, but she'd seen him in far worse pain insisting that he was fine. She suspected he was most upset about the fact that his night with Parker wasn't going to go the way he had wanted it to.

"Thanks for coming," he said grumpily while they waited for Parker.

"Of course."

"So… you weren't at Angela's party? I mean, I didn't… ruin any plans or anything, I hope."

"No, I was at work. I can get things done much more efficiently there when there aren't other people around. I thought it would be a good opportunity to wade through more of the limbo cases, but I wasn't doing anything pressing."

"Oh. Good." He nodded way more than was necessary. It hurt his head. He stopped with a wince, and pretended not to notice that she was looking at him like she was rethinking the whole 'you probably don't have a concussion' thing.

He was glad when Parker ran back into the room, coat on, wallet, shield, and game system in hand. He put his dad's things in Brennan's open purse and said eagerly, "I'm ready! Are we going to drive with the lights on?"

"That's an idea," Brennan said thoughtfully. "I could drive the 4Runner, Booth…"

"You're driving the 4Runner because it has Parker's booster seat in it. You're NOT putting the lights on," he said firmly, grabbing the keys off the table by the door and putting them in her hand.

"Aww, that's no fun," Parker complained as they all hurried out, Brennan locking the door behind them with Booth's keys. She decided to let Parker handle this argument – he was way more likely to be successful anyway.

Then she saw how icy the street was, as she helped Parker into the backseat, and changed her mind. She was going to drive as carefully as possible with Parker in the car. Without her backing him up, Parker quickly lost the argument about the emergency lights, and sulked a bit in the backseat, feeling slightly betrayed that she'd sided with Booth over him.

He turned his video game on loudly in wordless protest, until Brennan turned to look at him at a red light. "Parker, the roads are really icy and I'm trying to concentrate. Can you please talk to your dad, so we can make sure he's staying conscious and everything?"

Reminding him of his dad's injury and asking him to help her did the trick; he switched his game off and said, "Daddy, I had a really weird dream last night, want to hear about it?"

"Sure."

"There were all these balloons on the floor, and a giant clown, and…"

Brennan snorted and glanced at Booth, whose eyes had widened at the mention of the word 'clown.'

Parker kept chattering until they got to the hospital. When they made their way inside and into the waiting room, he grew somber again as he looked around at all the people waiting.

Booth took a seat on an empty row and motioned for Parker to come sit with him while Brennan went to the admissions desk.

Parker took a seat on a molded plastic chair next to his dad, shrugging out of his coat and pulling his hat off and looking at a man two rows over whose hand was wrapped in at least ten feet of gauze – most of it bloody.

"They're already overcrowded and understaffed," Brennan told her partner as she took the seat on the other side of him and started filling out the forms on the clipboard. "But I showed them your badge, dropped the name of the doctor that treated you when you were blown up, and they said they'd 'see what they can do.' I didn't get the impression that that meant much," she concluded.

"See, this is why we should have gone to the Jeffersonian," Booth said with a wince of pain.

"Booth, I only have the equipment there to set your wrist if your injury is one that can easily be set manually. Depending on where and how you fractured it, you could need surgery, you could need external rods, screws and plates…"

Parker had leaned around Booth and was staring at her with his mouth open and his eyes wider than she'd ever seen them. "WOW," he finally whispered, sounding awed. "I guess you're _really _not supposed to put your hand down when you fall."

"Hey, it's not as easy as it sounds when you're actually falling, okay," Booth said. "And I'm sure I won't need all of that, Parker. Bones is just trying to make sure we're prepared for the worst case scenario." He gave her a pointed look.

She had already opened her mouth to contradict him, but seeing the look on his face (the one that meant it was okay to lie to children sometimes) and the scared reverence in Parker's eyes now as he looked at his dad's wrist, she nodded and smiled in what she hoped was a convincing way.

"Anyway, your head needs to be looked at first," she muttered, turning her attention back to the paperwork.

"What? Bones, my head is fine, it's my arm that's killing me. Get them to do that first."

"Booth, your arm is only a more pressing injury if there _is _no damage to your head. In order to determine definitively if there's any damage to your head they have to do the tests…"

Booth sunk lower in his uncomfortable chair in response, not feeling up to arguing anymore at the moment.

It was that, perhaps, which scared Parker again, since it was abnormal for his father to stop in the middle of a conversation with his partner.

As Booth lay his head back on the hard plastic seat, Parker got up and went around him, leaning into Brennan's legs and hugging her. Moving the clip board aside for the moment, she pulled him into her lap, angled so he could see Booth. She wrapped her arms around him and rubbed his arm lightly. "He's going to be okay, Parker. We just might have to wait a while, that's all."

Parker nodded in understanding, but seemed to be trying to make himself as small as possible as he curled up against her. After a few moments, she continued filling out the clip board, awkwardly holding it in one hand while the other one reached around Parker to write in the tiny boxes on the page.

Ten minutes later, she was finished, Booth had his eyes closed against the pain, and Parker was absently turning his dad's badge over and over in his hands from his spot on Brennan's lap when a nurse wheeled a wheelchair towards them.

"Agent Booth?" she asked brightly, smiling at all of them way too cheerfully for Brennan's liking. By her tone, you'd have thought she was taking Booth for a spa treatment or a manicure, not a series of uncomfortable tests.

Booth groaned and opened his eyes, eyed the wheelchair with disdain, and got to his feet.

"I can walk."

"It's hospital policy, sir," she said, politely confused.

"Yeah, but I can walk," he repeated. "Just lead the way."

The nurse looked to Brennan as though for help, but she merely said, "He seems to be accurate; he's walking. What room are you putting him in after you're done with the tests? We'll go wait there."

"We aren't really supposed to…" she started.

They were interrupted by someone being wheeled by on a gurney, screaming. There was a lot of blood, and something very long that looked suspiciously like a giant icicle sticking out of his chest. As soon as she caught sight of it, she hid Parker's face in the crook of her arm, although he was squirming to get a better look, and she had to admit the screaming was worse than the visual image.

"We'll wait in the room," she reiterated pointedly to the nurse, once the room was quiet enough again to be heard, setting Parker on his feet in front of her and standing up, holding his hand.

"Y-yes, ma'am," the nurse said quickly. She checked her chart and said, "218."

"Great. Thanks."

Booth had been using her conversation with the nurse as a diversion, and taken the opportunity to get halfway down the hall and away from the wheelchair while they talked. Only when Brennan, who had been watching him out of the corner of her eye, saw him slip on the highly waxed floor, no doubt a little off balance because he now only had one arm hanging at his side, the other pinned to his chest, did the nurse catch the brief look on her face and follow her eyeline back to Booth, who had regained his balance and was now looking around to see if anyone had noticed.

"Is Daddy being silly because he hurt his head?" Parker asked, sounding scared, as the nurse hurried after Booth, who was nearly to the elevator.

"I think it's just a combination of the adrenaline wearing off after the injury, and the fact that he doesn't like hospitals at all. Hopefully it has nothing to do with him injuring his head. I'm sure you've seen him act much sillier than that before."

"Oh." Parker nodded, walking quickly to keep up with her longer paces. "Yeah. Tempe, what's adrenaline?"

She soon realized it was the first in a long series of questions that would occur to the little boy, when you expect a seven year old to behave in a crowded hospital on a holiday. And, thanks to the fact that she'd bullied their way into a private room while they waited for Booth to have his arm X-rayed and his head scanned, she was the only one there to answer all of them.

It was going to be a long night.


	3. Chapter 3

Ch 3

"But what if he has to get a metal plate in his arm like you were saying," Parker continued. "Will refrigerator magnets stick to his arm afterwards? Will it turn him into Magneto?"

"I have no idea who or what a Magneto is," Brennan said. She had answered all of Parker's questions about Booth's injury and the likely courses of treatment, but he was running out of logical, legitimate questions and venturing into the land of wild speculation. While Brennan appreciated his inquisitiveness and desire to learn, she was losing her patience as the questions became less and less relevant and plausible. "But no. refrigerator magnets will not stick to his arm. Parker, he's going to be fine. If you're talking nonstop because you're worried about him, you can relax. He should be back soon, and he really will be ready to go home very soon."

Parker, who had been wandering around the room touching everything he could get away with without her telling him not to, came back over to her quickly. "Really?"

"Really. I told you that already. Here, if you want to learn something, I'll teach you something useful, all right? Come here."

More to keep him still than anything else, because his endless moving around the small room and touching things was grating on her nerves – since it was basically a visual representation of how anxious she was also feeling – she pulled him back into her lap and held him in place securely with an arm around his middle.

She pulled out her cell phone and showed it to him. "How did you call me on your dad's phone?" she asked.

"I guessed," he said. "I pushed one and send."

"That was a very smart thing to do," she said encouragingly. "But what if you needed to call me and you didn't have your dad's cell phone?"

"I dunno."

"Do you know your dad's cell phone number?"

"Um… on my mom's phone it's 7 for cell phone, 8 for apartment."

"You know your own home number, right, and your mom's cell phone?"

"Yeah, she made me learn it when I went to school."

"Okay, then I think it's time you learned some other numbers."

"It's hard," he complained, squirming a little.

"No, it's not. Not if you come up with a special way to remember. Here, we'll try a few things and see what works for you…"

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The lesson didn't last nearly as long as she'd thought. Parker was too smart. She was trying to think of another way to keep him occupied when his stomach growled loudly underneath the arm she had round his middle.

"Are you hungry?" she asked.

"Yeah. We were gonna have dinner after we finished with the caster board."

"Well, I don't know if there's much around here that you'll be willing to eat, and your dad should be back soon… let's go find a vending machine."

"I get to eat candy?" he asked eagerly.

"No," she said quickly, thinking that the last thing she wanted was him on a sugar high in this small room. "You don't get to eat candy now. We'll find something you can have now and if you PROMISE not to ask me for it, I'll get you some candy and give it to you later, after we get back to your dad's."

"I promise," he agreed immediately.

"Okay, let's go. You can leave your coat; we'll be back soon." She led him into the hallway and they quickly found the small vending machine room on their floor. She got herself a cup of coffee and perused their choices.

There was a sandwich machine, but those prepackaged sandwiches had always seemed suspicious to her. There was a candy machine. Parker immediately pointed out the candy bar he wanted. She gave him the money and let him push the buttons while she looked at the remaining choices.

She finally selected a bag of microwave popcorn, a package of cheese crackers, and a little bag of mixed nuts. While they waited for the popcorn to pop in the small microwave next to the coffee pot, she also got two bottles of water.

"This is a weird dinner," Parker observed as they carried it all back to the room.

"It's not dinner. It's just to fill you up for a while until I take you home."

Parker made a picnic of the snacks on the bed in the room. Brennan, more than a little hungry herself now that food had been brought up, ate some of the popcorn with him, trying not to glance at the clock more than once every ten minutes or so.

The food seemed to calm Parker down; when he was finished, they threw their trash away and he climbed into her lap again, pulled out his video game, and started playing.

Within fifteen minutes he had nodded off to sleep, video game still loosely in his hands. He was drooling on her sweater, but she didn't want to risk waking him up by trying to move him. She knew he had been better behaved than most children probably would have been in such a situation, but it had still been stressful to her trying to keep him from worrying about Booth and keep him from winding her up while they waited.

She didn't like to wait. Especially in hospitals. So a lot of it was probably more her fault than Parker's, she admitted to herself, and rested her cheek on the top of his head briefly.

The door opened, finally, and Booth was wheeled into the room on a gurney, meaning there were now two in the room.

Alarmed that he'd acquiesced to being wheeled around in the bed, she sat up quickly, still holding Parker so he wouldn't shift or fall, and asked quietly, "What happened?"

"I threw up in the MRI. It made a big mess," Booth said. He looked very pale.

"You threw up? I thought you didn't have a concussion."

"I don't," he said, a bit defensively.

A doctor and another nurse entered before she could question him further. The doctor was carrying sheets of films. Seeing an easy solution now that there were two beds in the room, she got up carefully and carried Parker to the empty one that he'd eaten his snack on before and laid him down, holding her breath as she did so as though that would somehow keep him from waking up.

Booth looked at Parker and asked, "Is he okay?"

"Yeah, he's just tired. It's almost nine." She had already turned from Booth to the lighted panels where the doctor was now putting the X-rays up side by side. She thought she heard her partner mutter something about his broken bones being the only bit of him she was interested in, but decided that he probably hadn't meant for her to hear that even if she had heard him correctly, and regardless, the small crowded room they were in definitely wasn't the place to call him on the remark.

"As you can see, this is a typical distal radius fracture, an inch from the end of the radius," the doctor said quietly, mindful of the sleeping child.

"Yes, it looks fine," she agreed, scrutinizing every inch of the x-ray for anything else they might be overlooking.

"Setting and casting is very straightforward. The cast will be on for four weeks; we'll check it again then and determine if he needs another two."

"His bones knit fairly quickly."

"Hello, I'm still here," Booth pointed out. He always got annoyed when doctors – or squints – talked about him like he wasn't there. Especially when they did it with their backs to him.

He felt fully justified in his current state of annoyance too. He knew his arm wasn't close to the worst injury he'd ever had or anything like that, but that didn't mean that it didn't hurt, dammit. And he'd been in pain way longer than he needed to be because everyone was so worried about checking out his head when all he'd done was bang the back of it on the pavement.

Okay, so it hurt like hell too, but it wasn't broken, and his arm was.

Throwing up in the MRI hadn't helped matters either. Not only had it slowed everything down even further, but they'd ordered a CT also just "to be thorough."

All of that to conclude…

"No concussion, no brain trauma of any kind," the doctor was telling Brennan, who looked relieved. "Just a good bump to the back of the head. Might have a headache for a few days, but the pain in his arm should dull that too."

"Great," Booth said sarcastically. "I always like it when I have multiple injuries, because then I only feel the worst ones one at a time."

"I think we should go ahead and give you the local, anti-inflammatory, and pain killer before we set that arm, Agent Booth," the doctor said cheerfully, although he waved the nurse with the tray of filled syringes over with an unnecessary amount of haste.

"Finally," Booth said.

To give himself something to do while he got stuck with the various needles, he turned his attention to his son, who was still sleeping peacefully in the bed four inches away. His partner misinterpreted the look on his face, because she turned her attention back to Parker, covered him with the blanket at the foot of the bed, and said somewhat defensively, "I fed him."

"What?" he asked with a little yelp as the nurse stuck a long needle right into the spot on his arm that was already killing him.

"He was hungry. I fed him. Um, they didn't have anything really healthy. I gave him popcorn, crackers, and mixed nuts. And water. He went to sleep right after."

"Thanks. I'm sure he's fine, Bones. I'm just a little surprised he's sleeping through all this, that's all."

"He was terrified when he saw you get hurt, Booth. His system was flooded with adrenaline and a bunch of other chemicals you'd probably rather not know the name of just like yours was. He crashed. His body is smaller, so the results of fluctuations are more intense. It's one of the reasons why children frequently have such higher fevers than adults when they're ill and don't sustain brain damage…"

"You're giving me brain damage just from talking," Booth interrupted with a wince.

"That's impossible," she countered, but stopped. She sat down on the edge of Parker's bed facing Booth and said, "How are you feeling?"

"Like I should've gotten him a wii instead of that damn caster board."

"What's a wii?" she asked.

He started to answer, but the doctor interrupted with a slightly impatient cough. "Agent Booth, can you feel this?" he asked, pressing on the skin around his injury lightly, gradually increasing the pressure.

"Just the pressure. The pain's… muffled. Listen," he squirmed a bit uncomfortably. "Can she set it and do the cast, please? No offense, doc, but, she's kind of the expert…"

"Booth, it's a simple injury, I'm sure Dr. Nivens is more than qualified…"

"Uh, listen, I'm not offended or anything, but it's really a matter of insurance and potential hospital liability. I can't really let her set your bone here. If it'll make you more comfortable, after I set it, she can check it before I put the cast on."

Booth was eager to get home before midnight, if possible, before there were too many dangerous drivers on the road. And he was starting to feel much more agreeable with all the medication now coursing through his veins. "All right, que sera sera."

BBBBBBBBBBBBBBBBBBBBB

"Great, I'm good as new, let's go," Booth said, sitting up quickly as soon as the cast was finished. He patted Brennan on the leg and got to his feet quickly, swaying slightly as the sudden movement made him dizzy.

The doctor was still writing prescriptions for pain medication and anti-inflammatories.

"You still have a lot of paperwork to sign," the doctor said, handing him the prescriptions.

He shoved them into his pocket before Brennan could take them from him. But she held her hand out for them anyway. Not putting it past her to go into his pocket for them, he handed them over.

"I know you're not going to get them filled," she explained, uncrumpling them and putting them carefully in her own pocket as the nurse started showing Booth where to sign on a mountain of paperwork.

He was holding the pen clumsily, and after two completely illegible signatures, he said angrily, "You just _had _to put my thumb in the cast too, didn't you, doc?"

"Yes, he did, actually. You're far more likely to be healed to sufficient FBI standards in four weeks if your thumb is immobilized as well."

"Still… I can't do anything now," he complained, scratching a few scribbles onto the next line the nurse pointed him to. "What time is it?"

"Ten thirteen," Brennan replied promptly, helping him into his coat. "Do you want me to wake Parker up or try to let him sleep?"

"Sleep. If you don't mind."

She shook her head and picked Parker up carefully, draping his coat over him like a blanket for warmth when they got outside. They were both rushing the hospital staff through the last stages of the release process, heading to the door with Parker to indicate they were leaving, whether or not they got all their paperwork signed.

This sped the process up considerably, and Brennan was trying to buckle Parker into his booster seat without waking him ten minutes later. It wasn't easy – he was too floppy asleep.

He whimpered a little when she tried to hold him upright while getting the seat belt around him, leaning forwards. "Parker, come on, sit up just a little…"

He opened his eyes sleepily. "Are we going home?" he mumbled.

"Yes, we are. It's okay, you can go back to sleep."

He nodded and leaned his cheek on the seat belt, using it like a hammock for his head. She put his coat back over him and shut the door as quietly as possible, then leaned in the front passenger seat, because Booth was taking a long time getting himself in the car as well.

Eyebrow quirked in amusement, she buckled his seatbelt as well, deciding that a knowing smirk was just the right amount of mocking.

"Yeah, very funny, mock the injured man," Booth grumbled as she shut the door and went around to the driver's side.

It was early enough that traffic was still relatively light. She waited until they were close to Booth's apartment and then drove through the nearest 24-hour pharmacy.

At his apartment, she carried Parker upstairs and took him to his room, assuming that was what Booth wanted her to do. After putting him on his bed, she pulled off his shoes carefully and tucked him in, deciding it wouldn't hurt anything if he slept in his clothes.

When she came back out into the living room, Booth was making himself comfortable on the couch, toeing off his shoes and flipping on the television to the Times Square countdown pre-party thing.

"Do you find it at all ironic that the guy who annually rings in the new year for the entire country hasn't aged in about thirty years?" he asked her.

"I don't know what that means."

"Dick Clarke, Bones."

She gave him a blank look. He started to look mildly frustrated, so she added, "I'm assuming you know that even with the most advanced surgical procedures, it's impossible for someone to stop ageing at all, let alone for thirty years."

"Yeah, yeah. Listen, thanks for taking care of Parker and getting me to the hospital and everything, Bones."

Her hands settled on her hips at the tone in his voice, and she shifted her weight from foot to foot, thinking, before finally asked, "Are you asking me to leave?"

"Well, I want you to get home safely and the later you're out on New Year's…"

"I know the statistics," she interrupted. "What about your wrist? And your head?"

He shook the little white bag of prescription pills with a fake smile.

She rolled her eyes. "Booth – _if _you even take those pills, which I doubt you will of your own volition, half of them tend to cause extreme drowsiness. What are you going to do with Parker?"

He had to admit, she had a point. Parker was unlikely to sleep straight through the night – if Booth knew his son, Parker would wake up hungry within a couple of hours since he hadn't had a full dinner, remember that Booth had promised him he could stay up late, and force himself wide awake again in the middle of the night.

When he finally risked looking at his partner again, she was biting her lip and had that look that meant she really wanted to ask him something but was afraid of his reaction to the question. "Are you trying to get me out of here before midnight because of the societal traditions revolving around the so-called 'ringing in' of the New Year with those around you?"

"No," Booth said, chuckling and sounding defensive even to himself.

"Really?" she asked, and this time he detected not only genuine curiosity, but a hint of nervous concern.

"Really," he sighed. "Look, Bones, if you want to stay, stay. But you're right about Parker. He's going to wake up eventually and want dinner, and call me old fashioned but I think those people with two opposable thumbs should be in charge of all meal preparations…"

"I don't mind… although, for the record, you do still _have _two opposable thumbs, Booth. You just can't use one of them at the moment."

"If I were you, I would stop arguing with me and try to get some rest before Parker gets up," he suggested.

"Good point," she conceded, sitting down at the other end of the couch, after he pulled his legs up to make room for her.

"You can change it if you want," he offered, after she'd stared at the television screen for a few minutes like she was thinking about doing a new field study.

"It's sort of interesting, in its own way," she said absently, not taking her eyes off the screen. "Presumably, parties all over the country, like Angela's for example, are now full of inebriated partygoers reveling in camaraderie and their joint intoxication, yet even those groups feel the need to turn to this televised group of partygoers to feel connected to the rest of the country for one moment in time a year…"

While she paused to breathe, Booth glanced at the screen. Three young men who looked like the definition of frat boys were screaming at the camera with their tongues hanging out, holding giant beer steins. The one in the middle didn't have a shirt on. He found it hard to find much anthropological significance there. But then again, he wasn't the anthropologist.

"If you say so," he shrugged absently, tossing a throw pillow onto the coffee table so he could swivel around and put his feet up on that now that he didn't have the whole length of the sofa to himself.

She toed off her shoes a minute later and curled her feet up underneath herself. He waited a minute and tossed the blanket from the back of the couch over on top of her.

"Thanks," she said around a yawn, spreading the blanket over herself and relaxing into the couch even further, using the arm rest for a pillow.

He waited until she seemed to either be asleep or very close to it and reached slowly into his pocket. He pulled out his floaty pin and resisted the urge to tip it over so that the tiny cartoon lady's clothes fell off. He had more important things in mind for the pen at the moment. Trying to block her potential view by shifting slightly so his shoulder was in the way, he quickly stuck the pen down the cast and tried to scratch that spot that was driving him nuts.

He let out a sigh of relief before he could stop himself.

"Booth!"

She was leaning over his back and wrestling the pen from his grip before he could do more than yelp. She glanced at the pen and rolled her eyes. "Very mature," she said, tossing it onto the coffee table.

He wasn't sure if she meant the design on the pen, or the fact that he'd been using it to reach down his cast. He supposed it didn't matter much at the moment. She was now standing in front of him, scowling, with her hands on her hips, and he had to bite his tongue to keep from making another joke like the librarian remark he'd made on the plane to China a while ago. He still wasn't entirely sure whether or not she'd been sincerely puzzled by the remark, or had just pretended not to get it to keep the situation from getting awkward. It was probably better not to know.

"What?" she demanded.

"I didn't say anything," he said meekly.

"You're trying not to laugh."

He couldn't help it. He smiled and laughed, but did it quietly.

She let out a frustrated noise not entirely unlike a growl and said, "Booth, come on, you've barely had your cast on for an hour and you're already sabotaging your recovery."

"Geez, Bones, lighten up. I scratched an itch, okay, I think I'll still heal."

She took a moment, clearly trying to decide which way to go with the conversation. His injury must have earned him some sympathy points he hadn't managed to use up yet, because instead of continuing to fuss at him, she gave him a sympathetic look and leaned over to examine his arm.

She felt his fingers for swelling or numbness, and felt the skin at the place where his cast stopped just below his elbow. She was so focused on what she was doing, and was being so gentle and thorough, that he almost felt guilty about looking down her sweater. Almost. Hell, she was right there, leaning over. He couldn't look anywhere else, really, without closing his eyes. And if he closed his eyes, it would just draw attention to why he was closing his eyes. That could embarrass her, and he didn't want to do that, now did he?

_Maybe I've been around Caroline too much, _he thought. _I think I'm becoming a pretty good lawyer… I almost had myself convinced of my innocence there. _

"Booth?" she prompted, grabbing his chin in her hands and peering into his eyes closely. The urgency in her voice told him she'd called him a few times already and he hadn't heard her.

"Sorry, what?" he asked, swallowing after hearing how dry his own voice sounded.

"Are you in pain?" she asked.

"It's starting to come back," he admitted. "It's not the same kind of pain exactly, more like…"

"Pressure?" she supplied, standing up and looking at her watch.

"Yeah," he said, shifting slightly and draping his uninjured arm across his lap. "Pressure. Um. Kind of like… squeezing."

"You are a little swollen," she agreed, standing up.

She leaned over the table to grab the prescription bag, and he rolled his eyes. This was nowhere near as ambiguous as on the plane – she was genuinely clueless this time. It was annoyingly endearing.

While she fiddled with the bottle, he grabbed the blanket she'd been using and threw it over himself. "You can't have any more pain medicine yet, but you can have another anti-inflammatory."

"Is it going to knock me out?"

"Maybe. It will definitely make you drowsy."

He thought for a moment and held out his hand for the pill. She gave it to him and went into the kitchen to get him something to drink.

She came back with two glasses of water and handed him one before sitting down next to him. He took the pill quickly and asked, "No champagne to ring in the new year?"

"Not with these medications," she said firmly.

"You're not a very nice doctor," he informed her.

"Would you prefer to be back at the hospital?" she asked, reclaiming half of the blanket for herself and making herself comfortable against his side.

"No."

"Then don't complain. Let me see your fingers again." She examined his hand again, no doubt memorizing exactly how swollen his fingers were so she could check and make sure the medication actually worked in whatever time it was supposed to work. "The pressure should ease up when the swelling goes down, but if you're still in pain you can have more medicine in an hour."

Determined not to apply any double meanings to anything she'd just said, he glanced at the clock to distract himself. "Great, so I get to ring in the new year with Vicodin while the rest of the country is… drinking champagne," he finished. He hadn't been thinking about champagne, but he definitely didn't want to say anything that included, alluded to, or even rhymed with 'kissing' at the moment.

Neither of them said anything for several minutes, both watching the television but not paying much attention to it.

"You know," she said thoughtfully some time later, in the tone that meant she was either going back to a conversation they'd been having a long time ago, or one that she'd started by herself in her head. "It's probably not fair of you to expect Parker to wear all that safety gear when he sees you get on his toy without even a helmet on."

"Well, now he has a wonderful memory about what happens when you don't wear that stuff," Booth said dryly.

"I'm just saying…"

"Yeah, I know. Sounds a lot like, 'I told you so,' Bones."

"I didn't say 'I told you so.' I was unaware that you intended to get on his skating thing without any protective equipment on at all ahead of time, so how could I have known to tell you not to do it?"

"Just… never mind, okay? I'm obviously not going to be playing on it again anytime soon."

She contemplated that for a moment and finally murmured ruefully, "Well, at least you learned something today."


	4. Chapter 4

Ch 4

Parker Booth woke up and was immediately confused. Then he was confused about why he was confused, because he was in his room at his dad's, which wasn't so unusual. Then, he remembered that he'd fallen asleep at the hospital, and it all became clear.

He also remembered it was New Year's Eve. He looked at his dinosaur clock and grinned. It was only 11:15! He could get up and still have New Year's at midnight with his dad and Tempe! As long as she was still there… but she wouldn't leave when his dad was hurt, would she?

They were acting weird tonight. Parker didn't get it. He got out of bed and saw that he was still dressed, so he changed into his pajamas – the camouflage ones, and hurried to the bathroom first before looking for the adults.

When he finished, he crept stealthily into the living room, because he could hear the television on in there. He snuck up behind the couch, crouching low on the floor like he imagined his dad had to do all the time when he was being an FBI agent.

He could see the backs of their heads. They were pretty close together, in the right corner of the couch. They weren't moving or making any noise at all, and it occurred to him they might have fallen asleep too.

He snuck around the side of the couch and popped up beside the armrest, grinning and yelling, "Boo!"

Booth had been dozing and would have clocked his son in the head with his cast when Parker startled him if Brennan's reflexes hadn't been so quick – she grabbed his arm by the sleeve and pulled it back just in time.

Parker looked scared, but recovered quickly. "Sorry, Daddy. I didn't know you were sleeping."

"Uh-huh. You scared me, Parker, and I almost hurt you."

"I'm sorry," Parker repeated, bottom lip sticking out. "Did I scare you too, Tempe?"

She shook her head with an apologetic smile. "I'm afraid not," she told him truthfully. "I heard you coming, and I could see the top of your head when you came around the side of the couch. Get lower next time," she advised.

Parker nodded seriously, absorbing the advice.

Booth rolled his eyes. "You're encouraging him." He turned back to Parker and asked, "Are you hungry, buddy?"

"Yeah," Parker nodded, perching on the arm of the couch and leaning into Booth's side.

"What would you like?" Brennan asked him.

"You're going to make it?"

"Well, I think your dad trying to cook with his thumb in a cast probably counts as a fire hazard. It's definitely a safety hazard, at any rate," she said.

Parker giggled at that and said, "Do you know how to make grilled cheese?"

"Of course. Is that what you want?"

He nodded eagerly and said, "Yes, please."

"Booth?" she asked, turning to him.

"What? Me? Oh, hell yeah, if you're offering. If it's as good as your mac and cheese I'll take five or six."

Smiling at the compliment, she got up and headed to the kitchen, laughing to herself as she heard Parker say in a loud, scandalized whisper, "Daddy, you said 'hell' to Tempe."

BBBBBBBBBBBB

Both of them were lured to the kitchen by the time the first sandwich was emitting odors. She had to laugh again at the eager, identical looks on their faces.

"What, it's a compliment, Bones," Booth insisted, helping Parker onto the stool on the other side of the counter. He took the other one.

"You're easily impressed when it comes to culinary skill. I find it amusing," she said, flipping the first sandwich onto a plate and putting the next one in the pan.

She cut the sandwich in half and put it in front of Parker.

"Hey, I'm the injured one!" Booth objected, although she knew he was joking.

Parker, however, immediately handed half of his sandwich to his dad with a smile. "We can share, Daddy."

"Thanks, pal."

He took a huge bite just as his partner said, "Booth, don't, it's too–"

"Ah! Hot!" he said, sticking his tongue out with the huge bite still stuck to it.

"Daddy, nobody likes see-food," Parker reminded, as Booth looked around for somewhere to spit it out, flapping his hand at his mouth frantically.

It must have cooled enough, because he suddenly smiled and chewed. "This is really good, Bones," he said just before swallowing.

Rolling her eyes, she turned to Parker. "You might want to let yours cool a little bit more," she advised.

He nodded, smirking at his dad. Brennan turned her attention back to the sandwiches that she still had left to grill. A few moments later, Parker said, "This is the bestest grilled cheese on the planet!"

She laughed. "Thanks, Parker." She put a large white pill on Booth's plate and said, "It's close enough, and it's better to take this with food."

"Happy New Year to me," he sang under his breath before taking the pill.

They went through six sandwiches in the next twenty minutes, before Booth finally said, "All right, unless we want to go back to the hospital, I don't think I can eat any more."

"I don't want to go back to the hospital," Parker said seriously. "But Tempe," he added slyly. "You promised to give me my candy when we got home if I didn't ask you for it at the hospital."

"That's right, I did say that," she said.

She gave him his candy bar since Booth didn't object. They went into the living room because it was getting close to midnight. Parker ate his candy bar, watching the television eagerly.

"Is this your first time to be up at midnight on New Year's Eve?" Brennan asked him, watching him hop in place out of sheer excitement.

He nodded eagerly.

"Oh! I almost forgot!" Booth said, hurrying into the kitchen.

He came back with noisemakers, sparklers, and a lighter, and passed them around. Parker had used sparklers the previous Fourth of July, and knew how to hold them properly.

Now more excited than ever, Parker was giving them minute-by-minute warnings.

"How's your wrist?" Brennan asked quietly.

Booth was starting to get that slightly drugged look about him again; it had worn off shortly after they'd left the hospital, but was returning quickly.

"Good. Feels good now," he promised quickly. She raised an eyebrow at him. "Really," he added. Then, wanting the attention off of his arm all of a sudden, he looked around for something else to talk about and his eyes settled, totally by themselves, on her chest again.

Specifically, on the necklace she was wearing. Mainly. That was the story he was going to go with anyway. He was fairly heavily drugged at this point anyway; he figured she'd cut him a little slack. "You're wearing the necklace I gave you," he said quickly, when he looked her in the eye again and saw that mild amusement was starting to give way to impatience.

Feeling sheepish for apparently misinterpreting his actions, Brennan said, "Yes, I am" and felt her cheeks turn pink as she remembered Angela's reaction to the necklace, a few days ago. The necklace had one dolphin facing upwards, the other down, so that a pearl hung from the nose of the second dolphin. Angela had had more than a few remarks to make about the position of the dolphins – specifically, what it looked like they were doing, in Angela's opinion. Dolphins were dolphins, that was just the way their bodies were shaped! That had been her defensive response to Angela, and she was going to stick with that.

Parker blew his noise maker loudly, and they both jumped.

"Sorry," he said sheepishly, grinning at them both. "Daddy, can you light my sparkler?"

"Not yet, buddy, we'll wait until it gets down to one minute, okay?"

"Yeah, I guess," Parker agreed reluctantly. He turned his attention to the television screen, where Dick Clarke was saying that everyone needed to gather their loved ones nearby. "What does that mean?" he asked.

"Uh, he's getting everyone ready for the traditional countdown."

"Why do you gotta be near loved ones?"

"Because it's tradition that at midnight, you kiss the people around you," Brennan explained succinctly, since Booth was now examining his cast with great interest and acting as though he hadn't heard Parker's question.

"Why?" Parker persisted.

"It's just the tradition that's developed in modern American society; that the appropriate way to usher in the new year is by being with people who are important to you. It's supposed to bring good luck. Actually, as far back as Babylon in about 2000 B.C…"

Booth groaned. "Bones, you can't go back to Babylon to explain it to him. The ball's going to drop in less than two minutes."

Parker wasn't interested in the history of the occasion anyway; at least, not at the moment. He was looking very thoughtful, and finally asked, "So, we all gotta kiss each other when the ball drops?"

"Well, of course you don't _have _to do anything, Parker; it's just a tradition. It won't actually bring you any sort of luck, because luck itself is a fictional construct based on…"

"Bones!" Booth interrupted again. "Think Christmas trailers," he said pointedly, so Parker wouldn't get what he was referring to.

"Oh. Okay. Sorry," she said quickly, smiling at Parker. "If you want to participate in the New Year's experience, then, yes, Parker."

He shrugged and said, "All right. Daddy, light my sparklers now!"

Booth lit Parker's sparklers for him. Parker held them securely, drawing abstract shapes in the air but holding them well away from his body.

The on-screen countdown started. Parker counted along, loudly and excitedly, coming back over to them. His sparkler had died. Booth gave him a fresh one at "5."

"Count," Parker insisted in between shouting out the numbers.

Booth and Brennan joined in for the last five seconds of the countdown, everyone watching as the ball dropped. Parker's excitement was contagious. He cheered loudly when the numbers lit up at zero. On screen, everyone started kissing and "Auld Lang Syne" began playing.

Parker turned to his dad and hugged him carefully, holding his sparkler away from them both. He kissed him on the cheek. Booth hugged him with one arm affectionately and kissed the top of his head. "Happy New Year, bub."

"Happy New Year, Daddy!"

Parker shoved his sparkler into his dad's hand and hugged Brennan enthusiastically with both arms, grinning hugely and planting a very fast, somewhat furtive kiss right on her lips before she even realized what he was doing. "Happy New Year, Tempe!"

"Happy New Year, Parker," she laughed, as he hurried back to his dad to retrieve his sparkler.

"Hey, on the cheek next time, buddy," Booth muttered quietly to his son, although he couldn't help but be a bit impressed and proud of his son's nerve there.

"Your turn," Parker called as he headed around the coffee table to play with his sparkler and watch the people on screen.

Booth and Brennan looked at each other. Brennan shrugged, as though saying it was his call.

Well, Booth thought to himself. If it was his call, he wasn't about to be upstaged by his seven year old son.

He leaned in and kissed her. Surprised at how quickly he had moved, it took her a second to recover from the surprise and kiss him back, but as soon as she shifted her head to the right slightly, it was like being instantly transported to last week at Christmas. He smiled against her mouth and deepened the kiss, completely forgetting that Parker was awake and undoubtedly somewhere nearby.

Parker, luckily, was otherwise occupied. He was watching all of the happenings on television curiously. Lots of people were kissing, grown-up kissing – that part was gross. But there were fireworks going off, music, people singing a song he didn't know, and all kinds of celebrating with party horns and streamers and people screaming at the camera.

When the song ended, the on-screen festivities started to die down. He played with his sparkler until it died out, then turned back to his dad and his dad's partner to ask them if they knew that song and could teach it to him for next year… but they were busy. Wrinkling his nose in disgust, he tried to think of what to do.

He knew grown-ups didn't like to be interrupted when they were kissing, especially when they were kissing like _that, _but this was his very first New Year's Eve ever! He was supposed to be included in the celebrations, after all!

It didn't occur to him that he was somewhat responsible for the fact that they were still kissing. He just determined that they'd been kissing for long enough. It was definitely time to interrupt them. He went over to them and stood in front of them with his arms crossed. They didn't notice him. He didn't like not being noticed.

He pulled his party horn out of his pocket and blew it loudly in their direction. They both jumped, the kiss ending awkwardly and abruptly.

Their eyes met for a quick moment of surprise, disappointment, affection, and guilt before they turned to Parker looking sheepish, rather more like caught teenagers than adults being caught by a child.

"The song was over for a long time," Parker said firmly, trying to justify interrupting them. Because his dad looked kind of annoyed.

"Well," Booth finally said, wanting to avoid discussing what Parker had just seen if at all possible – hopefully if he distracted his son, Parker would just let it slide as part of the "New Year's Tradition." "What do you think of your first New Year's, Parker?"

"It was all right," he concluded, shrugging. "I guess it's more of a grown-up holiday. I like the noisemakers and the sparklers and fireworks!"

"You liked those, huh?" Booth asked, pulling Parker up onto the couch between them and ruffling his hair.

"Yeah," Parker agreed. "But I think this holiday has way too much kissing!"

"Oh yeah?" Booth countered, tickling him.

Parker giggled and squirmed with delight as his dad tickled him until they were both out of breath and Parker was saying that he couldn't breathe. He was now sprawled along the couch, his head on Brennan's lap, his legs across his father. He lay there catching his breath, feeling tired the longer he lay still.

Booth's spurt of energy had just about drained him, as well, or else the medicine was in full force now. His eyelids were getting heavier by the second, and he yawned into his hand and looked at his watch.

"I'm beat, Parks. Let's get you back to bed."

"Tempe can do it if you want to go to sleep now, Daddy," Parker suggested.

Booth clutched his heart dramatically, pretending to be mortally offended. "My own son! You don't want your one and only father to tuck you in anymore?"

"But Daddy, you _always _tuck me in. Tempe's never done it before. Besides, next time I come over she might not be here! Please, Daddy? You look too tired to read to me anyway…"

"I'm just giving you a hard time, bub. It's fine with me; I'm not even sure I'll make it to the bedroom, I might just sleep here. But you'd better ask her."

Parker turned to her with a hopeful look on his face. "Please, Tempe?"

"Uh, sure, Parker."

"Yay! I'm gonna go brush my teeth!" He threw his arms around Booth's neck again. "Goodnight, Daddy, I love you, happy new year, hope your arm doesn't hurt in the night!" Parker said quickly in one breath before running off to brush his teeth.

Left alone, they both looked away from each other, a bit embarrassed at getting so carried away with what had started off as simply humoring Parker by participating in the tradition.

"Um, thanks. For tucking him in. And humoring him all night," Booth finally said, although it looked like he was speaking to a throw pillow.

"You're welcome. He's very interesting."

Booth knew she meant that as a compliment, but couldn't help teasing her a bit. "Anthropologically speaking?" he goaded.

"Well, yes. But also in the entertaining sense. I've never actually tucked a child into bed though; what exactly does that entail?"

"A lot of bargaining," Booth said. When she looked confused, he explained further. "He'll sense weakness if you let on that you don't know what you're doing. He'll stall. Here's his usual routine. You tuck him under the covers, sit there with him while he says his prayers… please don't tell him you don't believe in God, by the way. Then I read him either one of his short books, or a chapter from a longer book, maximum. If he's still awake at the end of that, just tell him goodnight, turn on his night light, and shut the door. He's older now, it's a faster routine than it used to be. You don't have to check for monsters or anything anymore."

"That sounds simple. And of course I wasn't going to tell him there's no God, Booth. I respected your wishes about Santa, certainly you know that I understand that Santa is much less important to you than God."

"Yeah," Booth said, with a half-smile. "Thanks, Bones."

"Sure."

"I might not be awake when you finish. I'll try, but…"

"Don't try, that's ridiculous. The whole point of me putting him to bed is so you can go to sleep now. Your body has been through a lot today, and you've got enough drugs in your system to make someone twice your size drowsy; I'm amazed you're even still awake."

"Well, kind of hard to sleep through the last fifteen minutes or so," Booth said with a rueful smile.

She looked away, but she was smiling indulgently. He thought that being on medication seemed to be letting him get away with a lot, and wondered how long that would last.

"Anyway," she finally said. "I think I should stay the rest of the night, if it's okay with you. During the night your pain receptors are way more sensitive; you might wake up in pain and need more medication, and I could help you with Parker in the morning."

"Okay," he agreed immediately. When she raised an eyebrow in question, he said, "I didn't really want you to drive home in post-celebration traffic anyway."

She rolled her eyes, but let it slide. She'd now passed up two chances to argue with him… maybe he should break his arm more often, he thought.

"Well, um, you know, just… make yourself at home, if I'm asleep when you're done putting Parker to bed. I think you know where everything is, so just… use whatever you want."

"Thanks, Booth."

"TEMPE, I'M READY!!!" Parker called from his bedroom.

They smiled at each other as she got up. "Well, Happy New Year, Booth."

"Happy New Year, Bones."

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	5. Chapter 5

Ch 5

Brennan went into Parker's bedroom and raised an eyebrow. He was sitting on the floor in a middle of a mess of books.

"What are you doing?" she asked.

"Trying to find the story I want," he said. "One you'll like too."

"Just pick whatever you'd like."

"Well," he said, giving her a hopeful, yet slightly sly smile that she recognized – on Booth's face. On Booth's face, it was the one that preceded things like once again trying to get her to eat pie with fruit in it. "What I'd _really _like would be if _you _told me a story."

"Really?" she asked, surprised.

"Yeah," he said eagerly. "Because all the grown-ups say you write really awesome books, but I can't read any of 'em yet… I don't mean you have to tell me something scary or grown-up but I bet you tell way better stories than most of these," he finished, gesturing to the mounds of books.

She narrowed her eyes at him suspiciously for a moment. Parker had much more faith in her abilities to tell a story on his level that he would find enjoyable than she did. But he had that look on his face… she sighed, smiled, and nodded. "All right. I'll try."

Grinning, Parker ran over to his bed and leapt onto it, burrowing halfway under the covers. She followed him, switching off the overhead light and switching the lamp by his bed on, since she wouldn't need to see well enough to read.

She pulled the covers up to his chin. He scooted over to make room for her, and she sat on the edge of the bed, leaning against the headboard. He scooted back to her side, snuggling in and putting an arm across her stomach.

"Aren't you supposed to say your prayers first?" she asked, mainly stalling for time while she tried to think of what to tell him a story about.

"Oh, yeah!" Parker said. He folded his hands and said the Children's Prayer, then added one of his own invention. "And thank you for Mommy and Daddy and Tempe, and thank you for Daddy being okay after he got hurt, and keep Daddy and Tempe safe when they catch bad guys at work, and don't let them get shot or hurt ever. Amen."

Touched, she wondered if he prayed that every single night, and then wondered how he would feel about God if someday his prayer went unanswered. She hoped for all their sakes that never happened, even though she didn't believe in God.

"Okay, I'm ready for my story now," Parker said, clearly unaware of how much the prayer had affected her.

"Okay, let me think. You kind of put me on the spot here… how about if you tell me something you'd like to hear a story about, and then I have somewhere to start."

"Umm… how about a story about dogs?"

"Dogs?"

"Yeah, dogs who solve crimes!" Parker said enthusiastically.

"Like the dogs who sniff for bombs and find missing people?" she asked, confused.

"No," Parker giggled. "Make-believe dogs. That talk and act like people!"

"That solve crimes."

"Yeah," he agreed eagerly. "That would be a good story!"

She sighed. "Okay, I'll try. But this is very far outside my genre, I'll have you know."

"What does that mean?" he asked.

"Never mind. I'll try, okay?"

"Okay."

"So… once upon a time, I suppose, there were… two dogs. They worked for the canine division of the FBI… it was their job to investigate all animal-related crimes. And their names were…"

"Daddy! And Tempe!" Parker chimed in.

She laughed. "Okay. The Booth dog was…" she tried to think of how to transform Booth's characteristics into a canine description. "A Newfoundland. Do you know what that is?"

Parker nodded. "The big ones with lots of hair. They look like bears, kind of. Like Nana from Peter Pan."

"That's right," she said, impressed.

"Yeah, that's a good dog for Daddy to be. And you're a… um… you're a… a Pomeranian, Tempe!" Parker declared, giggling.

"A Pomeranian? Your dad is only a few inches taller than me, Parker!" She was mildly offended at his choice.

"Yeah, but it shows that you're _opposites,_" Parker explained. "Daddy always says you're the best partner ever because you're the opposite of him in all the important ways."

"Oh," she said, feeling pleased that Booth had described her that way, and understanding Parker's reasoning. "Okay then. So, like I said, these two dogs were in charge of all animal-related crimes. And one day, their boss called them into his office and gave them a new case…" She concocted the story on the spot; it was a ridiculous story, in her opinion, but she could tell by Parker's reactions that he was enjoying it. The plot was simple, involving a criminal gang of raccoons, wolves, and foxes, who were stealing dinosaur bones from a museum.

Parker was very sleepy by the time she finished it, but not all the way asleep.

"That was the best story ever," he said with a yawn. "Thanks, Tempe."

"You're welcome, Parker. You're a good audience, and that's half the story." She got up and adjusted his covers, not quite sure how to tell him to go to sleep now. "I'm going to leave now, Parker. Good night. Go to sleep, please."

He laughed tiredly. "You're funny," he said, holding his arms out, which she interpreted as a request for a hug.

She leaned over and hugged him. He kissed her on the cheek, so she reciprocated, smiling at him and brushing his hair out of his face. "Goodnight, Parker. I'll see you in the morning, okay?"

"Okay," he agreed, smiling. "I love you, Tempe."

"I love you too, Parker. Go to sleep now, please."

He nodded. She turned on his night light, turned off the lamp, and left, shutting the door quietly behind herself.

She went back into the living room, but was unsurprised to find Booth no longer in there. She decided to clean up the small clutter they'd left from their little New Year's party. That done, she checked the door, turned off the lights, and went to Booth's bedroom. She didn't particularly want to sleep in the clothes she'd been wearing since five o'clock that morning, and Booth had told her to help herself.

She was planning on using the toothbrush she'd used at Christmas, if it was still there, and finding something to sleep in that would be more comfortable, then sleeping on the sofa.

Booth had left his bathroom light on and the door partially open, so she could still make her way around the room without stumbling on anything. He looked completely zonked; his mouth was open, his breathing was slow, and a leg was hanging off the bed. She was glad his injury wasn't keeping him from sleep.

She looked around the room and determined that the most likely place to find something to sleep in was the dresser. She quietly pulled open the first drawer and peered inside. Boxers. Well, she thought. She now had the answer to one of Angela's frequent questions. Somehow she thought Booth might not be comfortable with her borrowing his underwear to sleep in, although she was certain it would be comfortable.

She shut the drawer and moved onto the next one. Socks. Next drawer: workout and casual clothing. That would do. She pulled out a hockey jersey that was on top. It was very large, and looked comfortable. She took it into the bathroom, removed her clothes, folded them into a neat pile on the counter, and put the jersey on. It nearly reached her knees.

The toothbrush she had used at Christmas was still in the toothbrush holder next to Booth's. She brushed her teeth and washed her face, switched off the light, and went back into the bedroom. Enough light was coming through the window for her to make out the shapes of the furniture. She decided to get one of the extra pillows off the bed to take with her to the sofa.

She was feeling around for it when Booth mumbled, "Bones, izzat you?"

"Yes, I'm just getting a pillow."

"'s Parker okay?"

"Yes, he's probably sound asleep by now. I'm sorry I woke you, can you go back to sleep?"

"Can you turn the fan on?"

"Are you warm?" she asked in alarm, flicking on the nightstand lamp. It was already quite cool in the room without the fan.

He winced at the light. "Geez, Bones, warn a guy."

"Sorry," she replied absently, hurrying around to his side of the bed and feeling his forehead. She looked in his eyes, pulling his eyelids down. "Glassy eyes, clammy… you have a low grade fever, Booth. It's just your body trying to heal itself."

"Well, it hurts," he said simply.

She glanced at the clock. "You can't have anything for a while yet. Would you like some water?" she tried.

He nodded. "And the fan."

"And the fan," she repeated. She flicked the fan on on the way out, made her way through the darkened apartment, and got a glass of water for him. When she brought it back, he was half-sitting up, leaning against the pillows on his headboard.

He eyed her up and down, which confused her until she looked down and saw what she was wearing. "You said find something comfortable," she said a bit defensively, handing the water to him quickly.

"Hey, I'm not complaining, I'm just… surprised," he said, after deliberating on the final word for a few moments. He drank half the water at once and set it on the nightstand. "When can I have more medicine?"

"Anti-inflammatory in about two hours, pain medication in approximately four and a half. Hopefully you'll be asleep long before then and you won't need it immediately. Are you okay?"

"Yeah… yes and no. I feel… weird."

"The Vicodin is dulling the pain but your body is still trying to signal to your brain that it's injured," she supplied, attempting to describe the 'weird' feeling for him in terms he would find friendly.

"Yeah," he agreed, nodding so vehemently she could only conclude the medicine was still affecting him strongly.

She went back around the bed to get a pillow from the unoccupied side.

"What are you doing?"

"I was going to take this with me to the couch," she said, puzzled. She knew he was out of it, but his basic reasoning skills shouldn't be affected.

"No! I mean, you're doing me a favor here, Bones, I don't want you to have to sleep on the couch." He pulled back the covers on the empty side of the bed, patting the empty spot. When he saw the hesitation on her face, he said, "Come on, Bones, what if I need help in the night? I might not have the strength to call out to you if you're way in the living room, sound asleep…"

She rolled her eyes, but she was smiling. "Do you teach Parker how to do that too, or is it just an inherited trait?"

"Do what?" he asked innocently as she got into bed.

"Never mind," she murmured, switching off the light. "Good night, Booth."

"Night, Bones."

BBBBBBBBBBBBBBBBBB

Brennan woke up and was confused at first, for several reasons. It was very light in the room, meaning that she'd slept much later than she normally did, even on a holiday or weekend. She was in Booth's bed, with Booth, who seemed to have determined at some point that her chest was a more comfortable pillow than his usual one.

He was still sound asleep, snoring, and she was fairly certain he was drooling on her.

The other reason she was confused reasserted itself; what had woken her up? Odds were good that it was the far-off pounding she could hear now that it had renewed. Someone banging on the front door, no doubt.

Booth was so sound asleep she wondered if he had gotten up to take more medication when he shouldn't have – they'd _both _been up at around four-thirty because he'd awoken in pain.

She was amazed – and slightly concerned – that she managed to wriggle out from underneath him without waking him.

Wondering who on earth was banging on the door so insistently, she hurried to the door to get the person to stop as quickly as possible. She thought it would probably be Rebecca, but it wasn't – it was Angela.

"Angela, what are you doing here?" she asked sleepily, leaning in the doorframe for support and wincing slightly at how light everything was.

"What are _you _doing here?" Angela squealed excitedly. "I came to get Booth to help track you down because I got freaked out when I couldn't find you. You didn't answer your cell or your home phone, or your office; no one at the Jeffersonian has seen you since yesterday… I got scared."

"Ange, I'm sorry. I think I left my phone on silent; I don't remember switching the volume back on last night."

"So," Angela grinned knowingly. "Nice nightwear, Bren. Not your usual attire, is it? Or maybe it is now, and I'm out of the loop…"

She rolled her eyes, knowing that Angela was never going to fully believe whatever she told her.

"Ange, this isn't whatever you're thinking."

"I'm thinking you just rolled out of bed in the middle of the morning, looking all rumply and well-rested and adorable after a night in bed with your studly FBI agent, ringing in the New Year."

"Is it really the middle of the morning?" she asked, alarmed that she'd slept so late. More than that, she couldn't believe Parker and Booth had slept so late.

"Yeah, Bren, it's after 10:30," Angela said. "Must have been some night," she added.

"It was… but not for the reasons you're thinking. Do you want to come in? I need coffee to have this conversation."

"Just for a minute," Angela said. "Wouldn't want to keep you out of bed too long."

Brennan rolled her eyes and let her in, leading her to the kitchen. She started making the coffee quickly, while Angela sat down at the counter, still grinning at her. "So… how do we get from you insisting you're spending New Year's in limbo to you running around Booth's apartment in his clothes and your underwear… you _are _wearing underwear, aren't you, sweetie?"

"Angela! Of course I'm wearing underwear!" She poured two cups of coffee and grabbed the creamer, bringing it all over to Angela and joining her on the other barstool at the counter. "Parker called me yesterday evening."

"Awww, he is such a sweetie."

"Yes, but that's irrelevant. He was terrified, because while Booth was teaching him how to use his new skating toy thing… a caster board, I think… Booth fell and broke his arm. And knocked himself out briefly."

"Oh, God!"

"Yeah. So Parker called me while Booth was unconscious, and I came over and took them to the hospital…" She explained the events as quickly as possible – leaving out the part about fully celebrating the New Year's traditions, of course – and concluded with, "…And he kept waking up in pain when the swelling in his cast would flair up again, so that's why everyone slept so late."

"Hmm… I still think you're leaving something juicy out… but that's still a pretty good story, I'd say. And much better than all the horrors I was imagining when I raced over here to get Booth to help me track you down."

"I'm sorry you were worried," she said sincerely. "I turned down my phone at the hospital because I wasn't even supposed to have it on."

"That's okay, sweetie. I'm just relieved we're not starting off the new year with another emergency."

Parker stumbled into the kitchen in his pajamas, rubbing his eyes, looking adorably rumpled. "Tempe?"

She turned to look at him and smiled. Angela let out an, "Awww" at the sight of him, and let out another one when Parker came straight over to Brennan and climbed into her lap, cuddling into her sleepily, not yet fully awake.

"Good morning, Parker. Are you okay?"

He nodded into her and said, "Hi Miss Angela. Are you here for breakfast?"

"No, sweetie. I was just leaving."

"Ange, you don't have to…"

"No, no, I can see you have your hands full. I'll let you take care of your boys," she said, winking at her.

Brennan rolled her eyes.

"I'll let myself out. Have a good long weekend, Bren. You too, Parker."

"Bye," Parker offered.

"Bye, Ange."

Brennan waited until she heard the front door close and looked down at Parker. "Did you sleep well, Parker?"

"Uh-huh. Is Daddy still asleep?"

"Yes, I think so. His body needs to heal, so we should let him sleep as long as possible. Would you like me to fix you something to eat for breakfast?"

"Yes please," he said eagerly.

"Okay. Let me go… get something else on. I'll be right back, okay?"

"Okay," Parker said with a shrug.

She wasn't entirely clear on the appropriate social behavior here, but thought that it would probably be better if she had something else on around Parker. She went back into Booth's room, and checked to see that he was still asleep, then went back to the dresser and found a pair of drawstring jogging shorts. She had to roll them up several times to get them to stay on, so they ended up being not much longer than the jersey. But it was more the concept that mattered, she supposed.

She went back out to Parker, who was looking in the refrigerator. "Can I have some juice, please?" he asked.

"Sure." She got him some juice, and then asked, "What would you like to eat?"

"What can you make?" he asked eagerly.

"I can make quite a few things for breakfast, various egg dishes, pancakes…"

"French toast?" he asked hopefully.

"Absolutely. Would you like to help?"

"Yeah!"

"Okay, come over here and let's wash your hands."

BBBBBBBBBBBBBBBBB

Booth woke up with a groan. His arm and head were both throbbing. The problem was that, concussion or not, his head still hurt a lot, so when he took the pain medicine, it was like the pain would recede in whichever was hurting the most at the moment, so then the other injury would start to bother him more.

He looked at the clock, hoping his partner would give him some more medicine. It was almost 11… surely he could have more. He got up, went to the bathroom, made a concession towards dressing by pulling on some pajama pants, but refusing to don a shirt just yet, and went looking for everyone.

It wasn't hard to find them. Parker was shrieking with laughter and asking a lot of questions, which were being answered much more patiently than he usually heard his partner answer questions. If she was that patient with her grad students… he mused as he entered the kitchen, wondering what he was going to see.

He wasn't expecting to see both of them looking like they were auditioning for a cooking program on television. They both had aprons on, and were covered – Parker, more than his partner – in flour or powdered sugar, or both. Parker was using tongs to dip bread into a bowl…

"Are you making French toast?" Booth asked them eagerly.

"Hi Daddy," Parker called cheerfully. "It's almost done!"

Brennan nodded to the large stack of finished French toast, and said, "How are you feeling?"

"Lousy," he answered truthfully, heading for the medicine he'd spotted on the counter. "But that looks like it could mend bones," he said hopefully, eyeing the stack of French toast.

"Booth, there is no way that food could…" she started, then stopped. "Oh. You were joking."

"Yes, Bones, I was joking." He ruffled Parker's hair and kissed the top of his head. "Hey, buddy, you're doing a good job there."

"You were right, Daddy, Tempe knows everything," he said, grinning at him.

"Yeah, just wait till you get the mac and cheese, buddy, then we'll talk," Booth said, winking at Brennan on his way to the coffee pot.

While Booth set the table – slowly, because he didn't want to drop anything breakable and couldn't grip as securely with one arm in a cast, they finished up quickly and got cleaned up enough to eat.

Parker chattered away about his class at school, and about the experiment Brennan's dad had shown them last time he'd been at the Jeffersonian, while they ate breakfast.

It gave Brennan plenty of opportunities to watch the way Booth was using and holding his injured arm to assess his condition. He seemed to improve throughout breakfast, as the medicine started to take effect. He was also clearly frustrated that feeding himself left-handed slowed down the process of transferring large amounts of French toast into his mouth.

Between Booth's slower pace and Parker eating a mouthful at a time between sentences, breakfast was a slow, relaxed affair. They were all surprised when the doorbell rang.

"Maybe Miss Angela came back," Parker mused, as Booth got up to answer the door.

"Wait, what?" Booth asked.

"I'll explain later," she called, waving him on.

He went to the door and opened it, hoping that it _wasn't _Angela and looking forward to that explanation. It was Rebecca. And Parker was nowhere near ready – he was covered in syrup and powdered sugar, and still in his pajamas.

"Crap," he muttered.

"Well, Happy New Year to you too," Rebecca greeted, taken aback by his tone.

"Sorry," he said. "Hi Rebecca. Parker's not quite ready. He's finishing breakfast."

"Breakfast? Seeley, I'm on my way to have lunch with my sister! He's not going to be hungry so he's going to be impossible at the table."

"Sorry. I can keep him longer, if you want."

"No, thank you. Why isn't he ready?" she asked, already hurrying past him into the kitchen.

"Hi Mom, you want some French Toast?" Parker asked when he saw her.

"No, thank you," she said absently, staring at Brennan. "Dr. Brennan," she said after a moment of looking stunned, in a falsely bright tone. "I didn't expect you to be here!"

"Why would you think I thought you would expect me to be here?" Brennan asked, genuinely confused. Booth knew it was genuine; he was betting Rebecca didn't.

"Bones, can you go help Parker get ready, please?" Booth asked, thinking it was probably going to be easier to explain the situation away from both of them. Rebecca couldn't seem to take her eyes off Brennan.

"Sure," Brennan said, although she was clearly puzzled by the request. She got up and helped Parker up, pulling his chair out for him. "Come on, Parker, are you full?"

"Almost," he said, grabbing the last half of toast in one hand to finish eating and taking her other hand.

Once they were gone, Booth waved his cast at Rebecca. "This is why she's here, Rebecca. I take it you didn't notice it before?"

"No, I didn't," she said, clearly taken aback. "Seeley, what happened?"

"I fell off Parker's caster board, broke my arm. It knocked me out for a few seconds. When Parker couldn't wake me up, he immediately called Bones. She came over and took us to the hospital. We got back pretty late, but I knew Parker would wake up in the night and need dinner, because he only had a snack at the hospital, so I asked Bones to stay to make sure he was taken care of, because the medicine they gave me knocked me out… everyone slept really late because we got back from the hospital late and once Parker woke up, he wanted to watch the ball drop… then I got up in the night a couple of times because of the pain… anyway, we all slept really late, that's why breakfast is so late. I'm sorry he's not ready to go," he said truthfully. "I thought you'd be coming a bit closer to noon."

"It's okay, Seeley. I'm sorry you hurt your arm."

"Thanks. Um, do you want some coffee while we wait for Parker?"

"Sure, that would be great."

BBBBBBBBBBBBBBBBBBBBB

"My mom's mad," Parker said, sounding worried.

Brennan helped him hop up onto the counter next to the sink in the bathroom and started running the water, wanting to get his arms, hands, and face cleaned off so that he wasn't sticky. As she scrubbed at his hands and arms with a wash cloth, she said, "Well, hopefully your dad will explain the situation and she will be understanding."

"Why is she mad? Just cuz I'm not ready?"

"I don't know. You know her better than I do."

"She might be jealous because you're here," Parker mused.

"Why?" Brennan asked, genuinely not understanding.

Parker shrugged. "I dunno. But she was asking a lot of questions about Christmas after I told her about the book you gave me. She always asks about Daddy's girlfriends."

"But… I'm not your dad's girlfriend."

"Yeah, I know, that makes it way better."

"Why is that?"

"Daddy never keeps his girlfriends," Parker said with a shrug. "He's keeping you. You're his partner. He told me that's like a best friend, but better."

"Oh." She didn't know what else to say to that, and doubted that she'd be able to form her questions into questions Parker could adequately answer. She'd have to ask Booth later. "Well, I'm sure your dad will explain everything to her. But we'd better get you ready quickly so she doesn't get too impatient."

"Yeah," Parker agreed, nodding.

She held his face still by cupping his chin and rubbed his face clean. When he was no longer sticky, she watched him brush his teeth and took him back to his room. He had clothes that he wore at Booth's, so there wasn't a lot to pack, but Rebecca usually sent an outfit for him to come home in.

She gathered his video game and the other little things he'd brought into his backpack for him while he got dressed, and helped him with the buttons on his shirt when he asked. "I can do them," he explained. "I just can't do them fast."

"Ready?" she asked, picking up his backpack.

"Yeah," he said a bit sadly, taking her hand again and walking very closely to her this time.

They went back into the kitchen, and Brennan was relieved to see that Booth and Rebecca were having coffee at the counter, and everything seemed to be okay.

"I'm ready, Mom," Parker called.

"Oh, good. That was fast. Thank you," she said, smiling at Brennan.

"Sure," she said, not sure of what to say.

Parker turned into her to hug and kiss her goodbye, then did the same to his dad. Looking more than a little disappointed at the abrupt ending to their morning together, Parker followed his mom out the door.

"Are you okay?" Brennan asked quietly after a few moments.

"Yeah," he said, nodding. "I think. Tell me about Angela being here," he requested, wanting a distraction.

She explained Angela's unscheduled visit while they cleaned up the kitchen. When they were finished, they sat down for one more cup of coffee. "Are you really okay, Booth?" she asked somewhat nervously.

"Yeah! I'm great! Why? Oh… um… do you… do we need to talk about, you know, last night?" he asked, looking at his coffee cup.

"Last night?" she asked, confused for a minute. Then, she said quickly, "Oh! Um, no, I don't think so. I mean, unless you think we need to…"

"Not if you don't," he said quickly.

"What does that mean?"

"It means what it means."

"Really? Are you sure it's not a passive aggressive way of saying we actually _do _need to talk?"

"No… and I think you've been spending too much time with Sweets. Or listening to Sweets, at least."

"Definitely," he agreed. "So… we're good?"

"Sure Booth."

He studied her for a minute to make sure she wasn't just saying that, and finally nodded, smiling. He wasn't completely stupid. He knew they'd have to talk about it eventually. But she wasn't ready to talk yet, so he was okay with that for the time being. If there was one thing he knew about his partner, it was that you couldn't rush her. He had tried to explain that to Sweets once, but he doubted anybody really understood what that meant the way he did.

"What are your plans for today?" he asked.

"Well, that depends."

"On what?"

"On you," she said simply. "Do you need help today?"

"Bones, it's just a broken arm."

"Okay, I'll take that as a no and rephrase. Do you _want _company today?"

"Yes," he said truthfully. "But I know we interrupted you last night. I'm not going to ask you to stay around all day just to keep me from sticking things down my cast."

She thought for a minute. There were several things she had planned to do today. "Well, I was going to spend at least half the day working on the final exam for my grad students…"

"I thought they all had to write papers," he said, puzzled.

"Well, they do, for the grade. But I give them an exam a month before their papers are due so they know what caliber of work I expect on their papers."

Booth raised both eyebrows. "Wo-ow."

"What?" she asked defensively.

"Nothing. You're lucky you're the best anthropologist on the planet, that's all. Your student reviews must not count for much."

"What does that mean?"

"Never mind," he said quickly. "Okay, so you're busy."

"Wait! I didn't finish! I was going to say that I was planning to work on that and then, if I had time, get some work done on the outline for my next book…"

"Bones, the one you just finished hasn't even come out yet!"

"I know, that's why I might not even get anywhere with it. Would you let me finish?"

"Sorry."

"What I was going to say was that, since you'll probably want to nap today, I could come back over here around dinner time if you want, check on your arm, bring you something to eat…"

"Or I could bring _you _dinner. To thank you for helping me and everything."

"You don't have to thank me, Booth."

"Yeah, but that way, if you're at a non-stopping place in your book outline, you won't have to stop. I'll bring a movie too, for after dinner, okay?"

"What movie?" she asked suspiciously.

"Something you haven't seen."

"Booth, you tell me all the time I haven't seen anything!"

"Exactly. Which is why, as part of my ongoing campaign to assimilate you into the world of normal American pop culture, we will be viewing a classic."

"What?"

"I haven't decided yet, okay, Bones, but just trust me. It'll be good."

"Okay," she agreed, smiling.

"Okay," he grinned, getting to his feet.

"I'll see you later, then," she said, getting up and heading to the door.

Booth grabbed her wrist to stop her. She looked at him in confusion and he looked down at her clothing pointedly. "Not that you're not welcome to borrow it whenever you want," he said, referring to the hockey jersey. "But you might be a little cold if you go outside in it."

"Oh, right," she said, blushing slightly. "I'll go change."

He laughed and let her go. She came back five minutes later in her clothes from yesterday, looking a little bit nervous, which was strange, because she suddenly looked less comfortable in her own clothes than she had in his.

"I left your things on the counter in the bathroom," she said.

"Thanks. Umm, can you wait here for a minute before you go, please?" he asked suddenly, having an idea that he decided needed to be acted on before he determined that it wasn't as brilliant as it currently seemed.

She nodded, but looked suspicious, so he hurried to his room.

He grabbed one of the gift bags from Christmas that hadn't been thrown out yet – the one that had had Parker's book in it, and shoved the hockey jersey inside.

Hurrying back out to the entryway, he held the bag out to her, not quite looking her in the eye. "Happy New Year, Bones," he said sheepishly.

"Booth, what…" she started, then stopped as she peered into the bag and saw what was inside. She looked down into the bag for so long Booth started to get nervous.

Then, to his enormous relief, she finally looked up, and she was smiling. "Thanks. I'll see you later. Happy New Year, Booth."

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The End.


End file.
